An ink-jet recording apparatus in which a liquid functional material that is curable by an active-energy ray such as an electron beam or a UV ray is ejected onto a recording medium with using an ink-jet head and the liquid functional material is cured by energy irradiation to form an image has features such as that it is environmentally friendly, and that it can obtain a high-resolution image which can be recorded at a high speed on various recording media, and which hardly bleeds. Particularly, development of an apparatus which uses a UV curable ink as a liquid functional material is advancing from the viewpoints of easy handling of a light source, compactness, and the like. Under these circumstances, by taking the advantage of the high-speed fixing property, a so-called single-pass ink-jet recording apparatus has been proposed in which a web-like recording medium that can be transported at a high speed is used, a head having a width that allows recording to be performed over the whole width of the recording medium is placed so as to be opposed to the recording medium in a state where the head is fixed, and recording is completed simply by causing the recording medium to pass under the head one time.
In the case where color printing is performed by such a single-pass ink-jet recording apparatus, fixations of inks are performed while stationary heads the number of which is equal to that of colors required for color reproduction are arranged in the direction of transporting a recording medium, and active-energy ray irradiating means are placed immediately downstream of the heads. In formation of an image, a complex color is reproduced by overlapping color inks with one another. Light hardly impinges on a color ink which is in a lower portion of the overlap, and therefore the curing property is sometimes insufficiently attained. By contrast, an ink-jet recording apparatus in which a first or second ink color of the lowest layer of an ink overlap on a recording medium is black (K) or cyan (C) is disclosed (for example, see JP-A-2003-25707).